Modules and Loading through the Editor Interface

When you (re)load some Prolog code through the editor interface, the module into which the code is to be loaded is selected as follows.

• if the code begins with a module declaration, this is exactly the same as loading that text from a file using the Load Predicates;
• otherwise, if the file containing the code has previously been associated with some module other than user, the code is reloaded into that module;
• otherwise, if the type-in module is user, the code is loaded into user;
• otherwise, you are prompted to confirm that you wish to load the code into the type-in module -- if not, the load is abandoned.

Note that when a fragment of code has been loaded into a particular module other than user, the editor will subsequently insist that that code belongs to that module. In order to change this, the entire module must be reloaded.

When a module declaration is processed, the module is reinitialized; all predicates previously imported into that module are forgotten. Therefore, when only part of a module-file is reloaded through the editor interface, that part should generally not include the module declaration.

Loading an entire module through the editor interface is like loading the module via the Load Predicates in that all the public predicates in the module are imported into the type-in module. The only difference is that in the case in which you load the module through the editor interface you will be prompted for confirmation before the importation takes place. This is because there are situations in which you might want to reload a module via the editor interface without importing it into the type-in module; that is, situations in which you would not want to allow the importation to happen. For example, suppose that the type-in module is the default user, and that you have been modifying a module m1 from which another module m2 imports predicates, but from which user does not import anything. In this case, you may want to reload m1, using the editor interface, without importing it into user.

When a file that is not a module-file is loaded into several different modules, reloading all or part of it through the editor interface affects only the module into which it was most recently loaded.